Shutdown Will Interrupt Capitol Sanitation; Another Reminder of Dem Failure on DC Statehood

If the federal government shuts down, it will affect a great many people around the country, but the burden will fall extremely hard on the citizens of Washington, DC, who will watch their city get filthy as trash pick-up and street cleaning, along with many basic services, are suspended as a result. From NBC Washington:

The Gray administration today released an advisory about what would stay open in the nation’s capital and what would be shutting down. Trash pick-up is just one of the many city services that would get disrupted.

In the eyes’ of the federal government, the city is treated the same way as a federal agency since it is subject to congressional control. That means that some city employees will be designated “excepted,” like police and emergency workers, and will remain on the job. However, many functions of the city government would cease.

It is a sick irony that the American citizens who are most going to be hurt if Congress causes the federal government to shut down are also the ones denied any voting rights in deciding who runs Congress.

This is another reminder that the absolute greatest political and policy failure of the Obama administration was the failure to use Democrats full control of the government last year to grant DC statehood.

Not only would it have given Democrats two more Senate seats and one more House member, if Democrats had granted DC statehood, its people wouldn’t needlessly suffer if a House Republican temper tantrum shuts down the federal government.

The fact that President Obama and Congressional Democrats chose to leave hundreds of thousands of primarily black and Democratic Americans both disenfranchised and at the mercy of House Republicans should be a point of incredible shame.

Jon Walker

Jonathan Walker grew up in New Jersey. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 2006. He is now living in the Washington DC area. He created a politics and policy blog, The Walker Report (http://jwalkerreport.blogspot.com/).